Economy is in intensive care with no quick relief in sight; can cutting personal tax, raising GST offer a magic cure?
FirstpostEconomists love to give names for periods of prolonged economic slowdown. The former chief economic advisor, Arvind Subramanian, calls the current economic crisis the country is experiencing as India’s ‘great slowdown’, something he equates to the economic crisis India witnessed in FY'91-92 when the gross domestic product growth rate fell to 1.1 percent, currency tumbled and most macroeconomic indicators collapsed. Subramanian’s latest observations Some of the major observations of Subramanian’s Bangalore speech were: One, India’s ‘great slowdown’ doesn’t have quick solutions. There isn’t an easy cure for the current meltdown given that bank NPAs are still high and rising, NBFC bank balance sheets weak, and power, real estate sectors facing major problems. These numbers show that the economy isn’t attempting any recovery so far, despite the several measures announced by the Narendra Modi government to prop up growth, including a steep cut in corporate tax, major disinvestment initiatives and a series of monetary policy rate cuts from the Reserve Bank of India.